It's been that sort of few days. Life was much simpler when it consisted of working out what toy the cat was going to play with that involved him doing more work than me.

In a couple of weeks time I'm going to the first wedding that's not an aunt's. Or I thought I was, it turns out I went to one when I was a baby. Funnily enough I don't remember that. So this'll be my fifth wedding. I'm looking forward to seeing my friends, but I don't really like weddings much. They're just overly sappy, and this one's in a church, just to make it worse.

Friday I booked to go and see the SJA preview screening, which will be good, but I'm going on my own. So then I spent a while wondering why I only have friends who like the same things as me but live too far away to do them, or don't have enough money to do them, or friends who live nearby but have no interest in the same things. Until I remembered that this is all ridiculous and having a good time doesn't require someone else to be there to have it with. Sometimes having someone else there is a hindrance. And when it comes to going to the theatre you can't talk during it anyway and I'm perfectly capable of reading a book before it starts.

So then we came to Saturday and I went to Rotary's Last Night of the Proms. This year they had a quartet play various things, then we sang some patriotic songs and waved flags. It was good. Specially as I won a £30 voucher for a really good Chinese near here. But I ended up the only Rotaractor there. I did know other people and I did talk to other people, but they all came with their other halves (the modal age was probably about 60).

And then I came home to an email from my (younger) sister to tell me she'd got engaged. Which is not unreasonable given that they've been going out forever (actually forever as well, not just my idea of going out forever which equals more than a couple of months). And given that I keep getting his name confused with that of her previous boyfriend, it's just as well that there won't be any other names to remember. At least she won't be getting married in a church, but I will only know various annoying relatives. Assuming she can't get away with not inviting them.

So suddenly it feels like the whole world has boyfriends or girlfriends and I'm strange for not having one and not wanting one either. Plus I only fancy arseholes, which isn't a help. I have to remember that actually, it's all these other people that are strange and most of my friends are single.

I'm having a month of getting things done at the moment. Today I've been going through my shelves and drawers, getting rid of things. I clearly haven't gone through them for a while, because I'm sure I don't need water bills and car insurance details for two houses ago. I've filled up a bin bag and a recycling bag and have a big pile of stuff to sell, charity or bin. Which would be a bigger pile if I didn't keep taking stuff off it and putting it back on my shelves.

On Monday evening I updated the plugins on my blogs, most of that time was spent trying to work out why OpenID didn't work. Eventually I discovered that it does work, it's just LJ it doesn't work with. But I can now choose my icons for this post on LJ and DW without leaving WP. If I just remember, as long as I remember to do it.

Today I've done so much that I'm completely worn out (although that's not helped by my neighbours waking me up at 7.30am by talking for ages). So I intend now to do nothing that requires getting up for another hour, at which point I have to go out anyway.

I keep thinking I should update, but then I have nothing to say. I feel like my life has nothing going on it at the moment. Or at least nothing interesting. Which I've just realised is a terrible lead in to this post, which is a summary of what I'm up to... Read more...

1. Upon seeing a small tent-like thing by the side of the road you automatically assume there's a dead body underneath. Whereas it is in fact a BT tent to keep the rain off the engineers/hole. In hindsight, why I thought there was a tent concealing a dead body without any police cars or police officers around, I don't know.

I just went away and now can't be bothered with ordinary boring things. So in short:

• Work is not currently too busy! Although in saying that I'm sure I've jinxed it
• Yesterday it rained only while I was out. I do so enjoy shopping in the pouring rain and driving down the dual carriageway in rain so hard you can't see anything and not all cars put their lights on. Still, the last time I did that I had sunglasses on, so not having them on was a step up. And I did see a rainbow.
• I can't remember how many years ago it was that I bought my swimming costume, so it's not a surprise that it's wearing out. It was a surprise that it was so hard to find a new one. Everywhere sells bikinis and swimming costumes with shaped bits at the front, but if you actually want one to swim in, you have to go to the sports shop. Who had about three that were under 40" chest size.
• I have photos from Cheddar Gorge
• After telling people how none of my friends that I'm close enough to to be invited get married, I have been invited to a wedding. Which is a bit strange to me because I don't quite see the point of getting married, I refuse to set foot in a church again without a book to read to stop me from getting bored, and I was friends with them both before they got together. And I think that other people might be all sappy, saying how whatever they look together etc, etc, and I'll be thinking 'pass me the sick bucket'. I don't do sap. Fortunately it's in October, as both my dresses are black.

Our (unofficial) work car park is small and has no lines printed on it. After living somewhere where the parking spaces were really narrow, I tend to feel that if I can get out of the driver's side easily I've parked too close.

This morning I parked perfectly: I had to get out the passenger side.

I've been enjoying Victorian Pharmacy because it's interesting to see what people thought of diseases, how they coped with them, how healthcare was dealt with etc. The Victorian era was really interesting because so much changed.

But it also makes me think about what people in the future will think of how we lived. We look back at how people lived 150 years ago and it seems so primitive: no cars, no TV, no welfare state etc. So in 150 years time people will look back at how we lived and think it's so primitive and they couldn't have lived in the early 21st century.

The trouble with living in it at the moment is I can't imagine how people's lives will change. There are plenty of people predicting how technology will change etc, but it's more a question of how all the new inventions and discoveries in the next 150 years will affect the people living then.

They'll look back and wonder how we didn't know that and how we survived without this, but who knows what this and that might be? I think I'd like to go to the future and have a look. Although would it make the present seem primitive and unliveable in?

This weekend I've been quite productive. I have:

• Defrosted the fridge (it was desperate - but now my back and legs ache from it
• Wrote 10 drabbles for the 100 drabbles - I'm now up to 51, so over halfway there!
• Watched all of The Chase commentary, which was really interesting. My lovefilm rental list now consists of The Avengers, Ewan MacGregor films and a whole load of stuff they won't give me
• Watched two episodes of The Prisoner - I have four left on my PVR, although there's another one on tomorrow

Friday I went to the pub at lunch and then to a different pub after work. I was really dizzy after all that pubbing and not enough relaxing. Even though I sat with my back to most of the room, so I couldn't see much movement. The reason for going after work was to see someone who left in December to go travelling and she'd come back to visit for the afternoon.

I have sometimes wondered if I've missed out by not going travelling, but I wouldn't want to give up my job (especially during a recession) and before I got it I wouldn't have been confident enough to go. Now I can say that I haven't missed out at all. Most of the places she went to I've either been to or don't want to go to. With the exception of New Zealand, which is a hard place to get to, partly because it is the furthest away from here you can go, and also because there are too many people to see in Australia. So I'm happy just seeing the world a couple of weeks at a time - which is generally plenty because I need to go home for a rest after that.

I swear there is some sort of conspiracy against me by the god of petrol. If the petrol's going up, then any time I think about getting petrol but don't for some reason, it goes up 1p the next day. If petrol's going down, then any time I get petrol it goes down 1p the next day.

I thought about getting petrol the same day every week to get around it, but I don't need petrol every week. I do try and fill the car up when I'm down to half a tank, but that's mainly on the basis that the pumps aren't designed for people with small hands and any longer holding it really makes my hand hurt.

I've been meaning to buy petrol all week, especially as yesterday it went down to three eighths of a tank (my petrol gauge comes in eight discrete units). I finally managed to buy some this morning, on my way to work. I passed the petrol station on my way home and the petrol's gone down 1p.

There must be some sort of god waiting for me to think about/buy petrol just to change the price, it's the only explanation.

Today has been one of those days. I woke up to find three fire engines and a police car at the end of the road... By the time I left for work it was two police cars and a fireman van type thing and a fire engine that tried to get into the road as I was going out. Except that it's just not wide enough for that...

Then I thought work would be relatively quiet so I could get some stuff done, but it was ridiculous instead. I needed to start on a new project, thought I could do it in the morning, then thought I could do it at 4pm, then 5pm and eventually started ten minutes after home time...

But on the plus side, our Rotaract handover/16th charter celebration last night was good, especially to see some old friends. And I got home to find altariel1's Doctor Who book on my mat, which I am saving for my train journey to London on Sunday.

I don't like Wednesdays - although this is generally because nothing interesting happens on a Wednesday. Today turned out to be more interesting than I would have liked.

When I got to my car after work it was horribly hot, so I set off with the windows down - and realised there was a dragging noise somewhere in the vicinity of the left side of my car. I'd just been on that side and hadn't seen anything, but I was just in the right place to pull over into a spare space in a layby. And discovered that my left front tyre was as flat as a pancake.

Since this has never happened to me before, my first instinct was panic. And then ring the RAC. So they said they'd be about 45 minutes. So I cleared the rubbish out of my boot so they could get to the spare wheel. Today would be the day that I'd forgotten my book. But I thought I'd stay with the car while it cooled down. Which it had, quite nicely, by the time they rang me an hour later to tell me it could be another hour...

At which point I went back into work on the basis that I needed food, drink and a toilet. At which point I realised I was carrying a bag containing five cereal bars, two 200g bars of chocolate and two jars of pasta sauce. Not that you can eat pasta sauce on its own, but I certainly wasn't going to starve.

Since I wasn't there, this meant that the RAC man dropped off his last job round the corner and was therefore at my car before I was. In fact, by the time I got there he had the jack under it and was in the process of taking the wheel off.

He couldn't find anything that caused it. And he remembered that he'd just seen a tyre place around the corner that I'd forgotten that existed. So I will be paying them a call tomorrow morning, and doubtless handing over larger sums of cash than I planned to spend this month.

It turns out that the spare wheel is horrible to drive with. I had always just assumed that all five wheels were the same, but not. This one is smaller. You can't go above 50mph, but I wouldn't want to. Apart from the fact that it smells of new tyre, once you go fast it sounds terrible going along the road, and makes the steering wheel and pedals vibrate.

And all that time I spent hanging round the left side of my car (which I rarely go to) made me notice how scratched it was. It took me a while to remember that was caused by Tuesday last week when I drove into a hedge. So at the weekend I'll be taking it to Tescos for a wash and then see about polishing or painting it, depending on what makes it look more cared for...

I haven't updated a while. First I didn't have time and then I didn't want to catch up and then I got dizzy... But these are all the things I might have posted about had I got round to it sometime in the last couple of weeks: Read more...

So today is the day after my birthday aka election day. I made a slight detour on my way home and stopped off at the polling station. Which seems crazy to me because until now I've always lived less than five minutes walk away from the polling station. But this one is a bit over ten minutes walk away. It is sunny now, but I'm tired and that was a bit much of a walk for me after work.

It was quite exciting - it turns out there is a notice board inside that we could put a Rotaract poster on. It's a pity we couldn't have one up there for election day.

Oh, and I voted too. I didn't think that everywhere would have a short, blunt pencil, but it turns out they do. I got thoroughly confused by the names on the ballot paper being in alphabetic order by surname, but since I wanted to vote for the one at the top, that was fine. He was also the only one who actually lives in this constituency. And the most likely to win against the Tories. And the party I wanted to vote for, so that was handy.

I did get quite confused when I went in, showed the people at my desk my polling card, then they asked my name. At which point I paused, worked out they needed my full name and then gave them that. They were happy, but puzzled. I regularly puzzle people by pausing when asked my name because I have to work out whether they need my full name or whether I can just give them the shortened version.

There are many, many good reasons to vote and that I believe everyone who has the right to vote should vote. I know that often the best option is merely the least worst one, but if you don't vote you don't get to have an opinion about how the country is governed. My biggest reason for voting is that the Tories decided to have a general election four days before my 18th birthday when they could have hung on a few more weeks. I'm still annoyed about and won't vote for them on the basis that they screwed me over. Well, and a lot of other reasons, obviously.

Since this week I'm struggling to keep my eyes open after about 9.30pm, I'll be going to bed for a bit. The polls don't close until 10pm so there won't be any news before midnight. Doubtless I will be around on the internet at stupid o'clock, trying to keep myself awake...

It's my birthday today, so I had to open my presents this morning, before breakfast. They had been sitting around the house since Friday! I got:

• Chives (although I got those at Easter because you can't post a pot with soil and chives in it)
• Black thread (the type that's suitable for mending black clothes
• Three pairs of bright weekend socks, featuring pink and pandas
• The Bill series 1 on DVD
• Spooks series 2 on DVD
• Red Dwarf VIII - I now have them all on DVD except for Back to Earth
• The whole of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister - which is quite timely really
• How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier
• Betsy was a Junior and Betsy and Joe by Maud Hart Lovelace
• Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey
• A wind up bunny - in Harry Potter wrapping paper
• A gift voucher for Waterstones for an indeterminate amount of money

I was thinking I ought to post as it's been a while and then thought, what do I have to say? I feel like I do nothing at the moment. Which is mostly true. I have a social life on Tuesdays with Rotaract. Last Tuesday we went bowling. I did pretty well and didn't get too dizzy - but I did have to walk up to the lane with the ball in both hands, bend down, make sure I wasn't going to fall over, then throw the ball.

I feel quite good at the moment, which is pretty much related to work calming down and me getting some sleep. I keep going through phases of waking up at 6 or 6.30 and if you do it occasionally then you could argue that you didn't need that much sleep. But when you keep doing it and get tireder and tireder and have to go to bed earlier and earlier, that's not a help. So far this week I've only woken up at 6.30am twice, and once dreamed I had, which was a bit surreal.

Since I actually have a brain for a change, I have managed two drafts of my Remix fic. I'm quite excited about it and quite happy with it, so hopefully I'll get it finished soon, before I start feeling terrible again. Staying up late for the election in two weeks isn't going to help with that, but that's life.

I have decided that Sports Resort is my new favourite game on the Wii. I love archery on it - you hold the remote in your left hand and pull the bow back with the nunchuck, so it's much more like archery in real life. It keeps your progress like Wii Sports does, so you can see how you're improving (or not in tennis in my case), but there are other goals you can get (like getting 10s with your three arrows in archery for example), which makes it fun.

Speaking of, I think I'll go and do some Wii playing now, before HIGFNY and Outnumbered...

After a week I'm now sick of the election. Or rather, what I'm sick of is listening to politicians fail to answer questions. Although there was an amusing moment the other day when I was listening to the news on my way home, wasn't quite concentrating and thought Nick Clegg was Tony Robinson... Chris Addison has an amusing blog about it all. After my post about not being able to decide who to vote for I discovered the BBC website has a page where you can look at the policies of three parties side by side. So I spent a whole two days as an undecided, and decided to vote for the same party I decided I would have voted for in 1997 had the election been a week later.

I got my remix assignment and the person I'm remixing has mostly written in fandoms I know. So I could write pretty much anything. I've been skim-reading and I think I've decided, but reserve the right to change my mind.

I've discovered I'm intolerant to all gluten, although I can eat quite a bit of it. At this rate I'll be intolerant to all food in ten years time. If they could just invent a pill to take every day that means you don't have to eat that would do me. Although I'd forget to take it half the time...

Work's been really busy for about three weeks now, I think. It was really quiet leading up to that, so I thought it was coming, just not quite this badly. On top of being ill already and annoyingly not sleeping, it all completely knocked me out. Or nearly - I did work from home the past two days and I didn't work much on Thursday. But I'm really looking forward to Easter and doing nothing for four days. And hopefully sleep later than 7am because I'm clearly not getting enough sleep.

But I have watched my Ashes to Ashes series 1 DVD, so now I am all excited about the new series. And the serious amount of telly on over the Easter weekend! I went to set the video for it today, wondered why it was telling me I wasn't taping QI and Ashes to Ashes was on at 8pm, then realised the times were in GMT. And I can never remember what my PVR does when we change the clocks, so I'll leave it until tomorrow.

I signed up for remix. I'm going to be writing either Doctor Who (new), Doctor Who (all), Stargate, Atlantis or SJA. I have managed to do some writing this month - I have stuff awaiting the first beta go through at the moment. And maybe at some point I'll get my life back again...

Today was the sort of day when everything went wrong. It started quite well when I woke up about 10 minutes before my alarm went off - for the past week and a half I've been giving up on going back to sleep half an hour before it went off. So I got up, felt a bit less tired - and then remembered I was going to the doctors and had to be there ten minutes before I usually left the house.

So I rushed around, which made me nice and dizzy and had five minutes to spare, so I had a lie down, which wasn't really long enough. Once I got outside I discovered the windscreen was more icy than it looked and did need a bit of scraping - only on the drivers side, the passenger side was fine.

Last night when I got back I'd been to Tescos and bought 12 litres of orange juice, among other things and my car felt too heavy to back into my space as I usually did. So because I left early this morning all the cars were still parked and it took me a while to get out.

So then I was running late, but would have been fine if I hadn't had that lie down. But never mind, I knew the roads would be fairly empty and I merrily went along at 2mph above the speed limit because I was in a rush. Until I came across blue flashing lights and the main road closed, that is...

So after taking the back way there I decided I was only going to be a few minute late, if that. So I parked at work and walked quickly - and arrived five minutes late. The computer refused to admit that I had an appointment, so I had a slight panic and stood in a queue for five minutes to talk to a receptionist.

For some reason the surgery have decided that an asthma review requires a twenty minute appointment. It took five minutes, not unsurprisingly, given that my asthma hasn't changed at all.

I made it into work five minutes early and thought that maybe my luck would change. No, turns out I cocked up the launch of a project the previous day in a rush.

It did improve from then on, but I am no less tired. I want to sleep for 100 days. Or 12 hours, I'm not fussed.

What I've done on this:

• Wash my hair - Although the depressing thing about having put this on here is that I need to do it again on Tuesday
• Tidy
• Clean the flat
• Deal with things I've uncovered while tidying - might just be pay credit card bill, do finances and call Toyota to fix my car (which isn't broken) - I mostly did this, but the Toyota service department weren't in at the weekend, so they wouldn't book my car in. Helpful.
• Make muffins, biscuits and flapjacks
• Read/reply to/do something with all the RSS feeds I have marked as unread in RSS Bandit I did do this, but now I have more
• Do some writing. I have about three things to write before the end of the month, so I should get on with it, really I wrote quite a bit last night and this morning
• Sort out what I'm going to say at our Rotaract talk on 18th - I have two minutes on the club non-fundraising stuff and one minute on me
• Only watch stuff on my PVR taped while I watched nothing but Olympics and also lovefilm DVD I finished the DVD and am down to just three episodes of Being Human out of all the stuff I taped while watching Olympics
• Do a load of washing today and another tomorrow
• Do monthly backup
• Get LibraryThing book list up to date

I would have managed all of it, except that I went for a walk in the afternoon. I felt great while I was doing it and for about five minutes after I got back, but despite lying down for two hours afterwards I just feel increasingly more terrible the longer I spend not lying down. So the rest will have to wait and I'll get started on the Being Human instead.

Things I should do this weekend:

• Wash my hair (I know that's something I'm hardly likely to forget, but at least this way I'll get to cross something off)
• Tidy
• Clean the flat
• Deal with things I've uncovered while tidying - might just be pay credit card bill, do finances and call Toyota to fix my car (which isn't broken)
• Make muffins, biscuits and flapjacks
• Read/reply to/do something with all the RSS feeds I have marked as unread in RSS Bandit
• Do some writing. I have about three things to write before the end of the month, so I should get on with it, really
• Sort out what I'm going to say at our Rotaract talk on 18th - I have two minutes on the club non-fundraising stuff and one minute on me
• Only watch stuff on my PVR taped while I watched nothing but Olympics and also lovefilm DVD
• Do a load of washing today and another tomorrow
• Do monthly backup
• Get LibraryThing book list up to date

I think that's probably everything...